“You’re all the best things to me, Sloane. No matter how many bruises are in your heart or on your skin.”
When I open my eyes, it’s not my marks I see. It’s not the swelling or the scrapes or the blood. It’s Rowan, his navy eyes fused to mine, his arm banded across my waist as his other hand traces slow patterns on my skin.
I place my good hand over his, wrap my fingers around his knuckles where scars crisscross over bone. Then I lift his hand away, every nuance of his expression absorbed by my watchful gaze. I guide his fingers to the top button of my shirt and let my hand rest on the tense muscle of his forearm.
No words are shared between us. Just the connection of our eyes in the mirror, one that doesn’t waver.
Rowan frees the first button. The second. The third. The fourth is low on my sternum. The fifth reveals my upper abdomen. The sixth the jeweled bar at my navel. Still he holds my eyes as he works the seventh and eighth buttons free. A slice of skin down the center of my body glows in the light that bathes us from above the mirror.
My pulse pounds. I could see it in my neck if I was willing to break my gaze away. But I’m not. I keep holding on as Rowan’s fingers curl around one edge of my shirt.
He folds it open, exposing my breast to the warm air. Then he does the same with the other side. And still our gazes remain locked. It’s not until I swallow and raise my brows that he finally lets his eyes fall to my body.
“Jesus…” he whispers. “Sloane…”
My flesh is a mess of scratches and bruises, all of the marks darker and more obvious than they were hours ago. His gaze drifts over every inch of my exposed skin as though I’m something precious yet damaged, a broken revelation. It might not be how he expected, but I know he’s imagined me like this before, bared and vulnerable to his gaze, his touch. Just like I’ve imagined him. But it’s different to feel it in the heavy silence that stretches between us. I couldn’t have expected the way my blood would charge through my flesh, or the way the whole world would shrink to this pinpoint, this moment in a mirror.
Rowan’s gaze rests on my throat, his navy eyes nearly black, his pupils consuming the color until only a thin band of blue remains. It traces a line down the center of my body, his attention so slow and deliberate that it feels like a touch against my skin. It flows over the ridges on my sternum. It veers left and slows over my heart. It traces the rose gold piercing encircling my peaked nipple. Gooseflesh rises on my arms and I shiver as his gaze crosses my chest to the other side and the matching piercing on my right breast.
“Something caught your eye, pretty boy?” I whisper.
“Yes,” he says, his voice pained. “God, yes, Sloane. All of you.”
Rowan drags the shirt down my uninjured arm first, then takes his time to pull it from my swollen shoulder, his eyes remaining steady on the reflection of my body. The fabric falls away and pools at my feet. He takes a deep breath before he hooks his thumbs into the waistband of my leggings and pulls them over my hips. His fingers wrap around my ankle to raise my foot from the cool tile and tug the fabric free of one leg and then the next. When he rises to his full height behind me, I can see every strained breath in his chest, every thump of his heart as his pulse surges in his neck.
“I need to get my shit together,” he mutters, his voice low and gritty, the words not meant for me. He holds out a hand for me and I take it. “Come on. Into the bath before I fucking die.”
I drag my feet as he tugs me toward the cloud of white bubbles shimmering in the tub. “Would that mean I’d get an extra win?”
“I’m about ready to forfeit every game, Blackbird,” he grumbles. “I don’t think we need to go to the extreme of killing me off just yet.”
We stop at the edge of the tub. Rowan keeps hold of my good hand as I dip one toe into the warm water. When I take my first step in, I glance up, expecting to catch him focused on the details of my body. But he’s not. His eyes are on mine, a crease notched between his brows as though this whole experience is excruciating.
“You okay?” I ask as I steady myself with his hand and place my other foot in the water to stand in the small tub, my faint smile only serving to deepen his frown.
“Not really.”
“You’re doing great.”
“Shouldn’t I be telling you that?”
“Probably.”
“Just get in, for the love of God.”
“I am in.”
Rowan drags his free hand down his face. “How do you still have the energy to take the piss out of me?”
“I always have the energy for that. Your suffering is my number one priority.” My smile starts out bright but falters when Rowan’s gaze shifts from me to the corner of the room as though he can’t bear to keep his attention on my face for a moment longer. “What is it? Rowan…?”
“I’ve been suffering for four years, Sloane. I’m begging you here. Get in the fucking bath.”
My eyes don’t stray from his profile as I slowly lower myself into the water. Every inch that I fall, I hope he’ll meet my eyes, but he doesn’t, as though he suddenly can’t. Like he’s put himself into a box that wasn’t there just a moment ago.
I submerge myself until the bubbles consume my chest, only my shoulders and upper back visible above their diaphanous embrace as I curl forward and hug my knees. Rowan’s long exhalation is unsteady above me. It takes a moment before he squats down to my level. My gaze is still fused to him, and he still avoids it.
Rowan takes a facecloth from where he laid it out at the edge of the tub to saturate it in the bathwater. He’s careful not to touch me beneath the surface. He withdraws the cloth and slides it across my uninjured shoulder to cleanse the grime from my skin with slow strokes, and though I stay perfectly still on the outside, my thoughts churn with the force of a hurricane.
I swallow, still unable to look away from Rowan. My voice sounds small when I say, “Four years?”
Rowan’s eyes darken, their focus snagged on the motion of his hand as he sweeps the cloth across my skin. He doesn’t graze me with his fingertips, not even once, despite repeating the motion of the cloth until the water in it cools. “You already know. I told you at Thorsten’s.”
My heart lurches. Rowan dips the cloth through the cloud of bubbles and into the water, this time grazing my hip in a fleeting touch that might have been intentional. Before I can be sure, the cloth is out of the water and sliding over my spine.
“You…you remember that?”
Rowan doesn’t answer. I don’t think he will. So when he dips the cloth into the water for a third time, I grab his wrist beneath the surface, and finally his eyes meet mine.